Hello, I am Xu Lang, the author of "Night Walking Record".

In April 2016, I started writing this series of stories and posting them online – and soon the stories were discussed, appreciated and questioned alike.

Many people feel that the story of the Nightkin is good, but it is somewhat dark and depressing, which is uncomfortable. My response to this is: keep writing and let you get used to this depression.

This is not a crash therapy. I do this because: human beings have the most real and strong response to fear, to darkness, and that is innate. And the best solution is to face it head-on.

Why did I write the story of the Nightkin?

When I was a child, adults used to tell terrible stories (for children) to the effect that if you don't obey, the monster or bad guy in the story will take you away. When the child listens to the story, he remembers the warning. It is an instinct of people to be attracted to stories, to attract attention, to infect emotions, and to leave an impression. People like to listen to stories, like to relay stories, and like to participate in stories.

Faced with the unknown world, the ancient Chinese told themselves a story: Pangu opened the world, and Nuwa pinched clay figures. The Jews said, "God said there would be light, and there was light." "Children always ask their parents where they come from. The answer is often, picked up from the grove, the garbage dump, the seaside, etc. In the same way, when you tell someone a reason, it often starts with something like: "I have a friend ......."

Benjamin defined a story: a story is a personal experience from afar. His words contain two characteristics of the story:

1. Stories are not something you experience and come across often.

2. The story sounds real.

In the "real" story, experience the experience that has never been experienced before, and this is the charm of the story. I grew up listening to stories and telling stories, especially in the urban legend genre.

More than ten years ago, when I was in junior high school, the story of "cutting kidneys" suddenly began to circulate in the school. My friends and I had a long and lively discussion between classes and after school. When I went to my grandmother's house for dinner in the evening, I heard my uncle warn my cousin who had just joined the work: be careful about your life, don't talk to girls who are too beautiful, and beware of having your kidney cut off. After a while, the son of a middle-aged couple in the community disappeared, and the uncle and aunt were rumored to have the missing young man's kidney cut.

None of these people who talk about and spread the idea of "cutting kidneys" can confirm whether there is really a kidney cut, how to cut the kidney, and whether it is technically feasible. But the story just spread, and while it became an after-dinner conversation, it also kept alerting people. There must be young people who originally liked to wander around at night, but after listening to this story, they chose to go home every night to watch TV and stay away from the pretty girl, thinking that it was safer.

This is urban legend, an interesting folk culture that is interdependent with urban life.

In the statistics of the backstage of the "Demon Universe" official account, more than half of the young female readers are a little surprising. At first, many of my friends and I had the same doubt: Will the story I write scare away the girls?

In fact, darkness and fear did not drive them away, but allowed them to stay. Their messages basically express a positive attitude and vigilance towards reality, rather than panic and rejection, which makes me very happy and feel that I am doing something meaningful.

I felt like I had the ability to tell a good story and didn't want to waste it. Using stories to convey experiences and exchange ideas is a way for me to broaden my life experience and understand human nature. "Nightcrawler" is the identity I set for myself. This identity satisfies my passion for bizarre stories and my investigative fetish, and I pour my love of stories and adventure into this identity. In my mind, Nightkin is both Batman and Indiana Jones in urban China, as well as Sherlock Holmes and Detective Polo.

My research and writing are all about creating stories like urban legends. The proximity of urban legends to reality makes what Benjamin defines as "a story" "a personal experience from not far away".

"Night Walking" is a fictional story, and someone asked me, why is your story so terrible?

The reason why the adult's story can attract and warn children is because it is told in a way - "This happened on ×× Road" and "The child of so-and-so family was arrested because he was disobedient". This is the characteristic of urban legends, and it has been the basic attribute of oral literature for thousands of years.

Reality and fantasy are at the two poles of story creation. Different writers have different opinions.

Nabokov, the author of "Lolita", did not look at reality, he said, fiction is fiction. In the opinion of this master of storytelling with imagination and structural skills, human deception can never compare to nature, and if someone says that his novels are real people and real things, he will feel that it is an insult to art and an insult to truth. I like Nabokov and find his novels good, but I also like stories that are "made up like the real thing".

In my opinion, the approach of non-fiction and pseudo-recording is closer to the heart of the average reader. Even Nabokov's fiction is always linked to reality – his autobiographical anthology, Say, Memory, is a technique that bridges the gap between real memory and fantasy.

Authenticity is a kind of beauty, and the method of writing to create authenticity is an aesthetic orientation. In the same way, the different focus on darkness and light, is also an aesthetic orientation, which is more evocative and more infectious. So, in my writing, I try to learn this storytelling skill. "Like the real thing" is not the reality of the real world, but the truth of the presentation of the story, or the truth of the narrative logic.

To achieve this effect, I experimented with different approaches in my writing, using more real-world materials to create reality. This makes my writing wander the borders, like scratching with the tip of a knife, but without cutting through the skin.

This way of writing serves two purposes:

First, it arouses a serious face and warning, and shows the evil of human nature and the inferiority of the living environment. The dark experience after reading it is inevitable and necessary.

Second, the thrill of sharing danger, the psychological danger implied in urban legends is exciting, and it is believed that it is a universal psychological experience.

The story of "Night Walking" is fictional, but the unsettling emotions are real. Urban legends and orally transmitted "realistic" stories exist because people's underlying uneasiness about the world is always present.

There is a belief in biology that animals that seek new excitement and love to challenge new environments are more adaptable and have a greater probability of passing on their genes. It's a biological instinct. Although our intellectual development has caused biological instincts to degrade and hide, in this respect, it should be the same as animals. Some people love extreme sports, some love horror movies, some love jungle adventures...... Because people in the city can't explore, adventure shows and reality shows are often popular.

When I write a Nightkin story, I also think: am I creating horror and danger? Is that right? Every time I thought about it, I continued to write more determinedly. Maybe it's because I have some kind of gene that prefers dangerous experiences, just like horror movie lovers.

I live in a relatively safe environment – as of now, no one has cut my kidney in front of me. Most people, like me, have a sense of certainty that they are living in a safe environment.

Experiencing dangerous imagination in a safe environment will make you more confident of the safety of the moment and more alert to potential dangers. Scientifically, it's a direct balance of adrenaline and amygdala-secreted hormones, which are stimuli-induced pleasures.

I believe that it is necessary to face the truth of survival, not to survive in a kangaroo way.

The greatest truth of survival is death, and how to deal with this fact will determine how a person survives.

The dangers and unrest of the world will not disappear because I turn a blind eye. The sins of the world will not be diminished because of my indifference. I was afraid of death coming suddenly, so I chose to face the truth and adjust to my anxieties, which made me cherish what I had.

Therefore, after hesitating for a while, I decided to write "Night Walk" all the time, and continue to learn how to infect readers on the premise of mastering the boundaries.

I have read an article by Haruki Murakami about Stephen King's novels, to the effect that the most important thing in a novel is not to make people feel terrible, but to make the reader uneasy to a certain appropriate level.

Just the right amount of uneasiness is what I'm looking for in my storytelling skills.

In the story of the Nightcrawler, the evildoers have different methods, and the innocent are also harmed, which is where human nature is real.

I don't take pleasure in appreciating the suffering of others, but I hope that in the process I will provoke the necessary vigilance and reflection. What are the boundaries of human evil? What is the reason for the helplessness of survival? What is the reason for a person to become a demon?

I thought that if I suppressed my reaction to the uneasiness, injustice, and cruelty, I would be very likely to slowly move towards distortion, and as a result of the distortion, I might unconsciously become a wicked person – and that was terrible.

The Gospel of Matthew says, "Why do you see only the speck in your brother's eye, but not think of the beam in your own eye?" Everyone tends to define the world with their own ideas and vision, which is a physiological instinct as well as a social instinct. Because this definition is relatively definite, make yourself feel safe. But when more information and values are exposed to the individual, the sense of uncertainty is unsettling.

"A true warrior dares to face the bleak life and dare to face the dripping blood." On the basis of Mr. Lu Xun's sentence, I would like to extend it: the courage to face the truth and values of pluralism is the life worth living, and the person who can live clearly.

Constantly broaden the breadth of your understanding of human nature, which is enough to fight against life.

"Night Walk" is my method, and I hope you have your own method.